I’m sure many people think that verbal abuse isn’t that bad. Those are the people who’ve never been a victim of it. If they’d experienced it, I’m sure they’d be singing a different tune. Being verbally abused feels like getting punched in the face.

So my friend and I had a big fight and my head is reeling from it. I don’t do ‘friends’ with people and, to tell you the truth, in 60 years this is the first real friend who I’m starting to try to be real with in my life. That’s how much abuse I’ve had to deal with. I’ve been real with my husband but then we’re like two ships passing in the night with each other. There’s very little of anything between us and, to tell the truth, it’s been that way since we got married. Almost right away, he changed after we got married, but that’s another tale to tell for another time.

Yet now I am feeling this way on a long term basis not just for a day like I was here.

This ride of ‘no addictions or obsessions’ has suddenly transformed itself. Up until now, I’ve been careening at break-neck speed, through the pitch blackness, on a hairy, frightening, roller coaster; being tossed around like a rag-doll, completely out of emotional control. But suddenly, an abrupt change has occurred. Suddenly I’m finding myself in a place of absolute quiet stillness. It feels like I’m riding on a smooth white platform that’s silently and swiftly skimming across the surface of a pale blue, sparkling, glassy sea.

There’s a drug that my psychiatrist prescribed for me a few weeks ago called Prazosin. It’s for PTSD. He said it was a pretty old drug – from the 70’s – and was used to treat high blood pressure. However, one of the other things it does is calm the adrenal glands so that they don’t pump out adrenalin so furiously the way they do in PTSD victims who are in constant ‘fight or flight’ mode. Anyway, since I’ve been on this drug I’ve begun to get clear-headed in a way that I’ve never been aware of before.

I’ve been so angry lately. The little girl is angry. The one who took all the abuse for the rest of us. She’s angrier than all get out. “It’s not fair”, she says about taking the excess food away. “As if trying to live in this world isn’t bad enough for me, now you have to take my food away too?!! What’s next!!? Are you going to try to get rid of me altogether!!?”

I want to apologize for the quality of my writing lately. Since the writing of the above post, I haven’t been getting very good sleep and, even though I’ve seen my psychiatrist three times in the last two weeks, the medication regime adjustments for the Bipolar, have not yet helped very much.

I don’t think that the AA slogan: “Uncover; Discover; Discard” is something to try to push an alcoholic, who was abused as a child, to do. Furthermore, I don’t think it is a saying that Bill and Bob would have approved of either.

(sorry this is so long – I couldn’t make it any shorter and still say what I needed to say).

I’ve been out in the field with God for a long time, but have taken many long, long ‘breaks’ (through various addictions) from my studies. Though I’ve been freed from alcohol obsession for 34 years, I’ve been substituting many other secondary addictions to take it’s place. I could not stop these other addictions myself, so I’ve been praying, for all my sober 34 years, to have these other addictions removed. With all my heart, I’ve wanted “No other gods before God”.

I’m writing today because I don’t know what else to do right now in this addiction-free, obsession-free experiment. I’m tired. I do know that. I’m beginning to see that there’s going to be a lot of work involved in keeping my introject-father ** (the ‘father’ I still carry inside me) at peace. I need to both soothe and reward him… all…the… time… or he gets freaked out again. I don’t know if I can get rid of him altogether. I wish I could. The problem is that his personality encompasses 90% of who I am. He injected himself into me so deeply that there’s almost nothing of a ‘me’ in me. This is how it seems to be as far as I can see… so far. Maybe, one day, I’ll actually be able to be a ‘me’ and not just a ‘him’.

It’s been several days since my last post. I haven’t written because I wasn’t sure if my ride on Space Mountain might finally be coming to an end or not. Because, at some points there were lulls in the ride, I wasn’t sure if I was actually seeing some daylight or if it was just a lull. But, for the last few days things have been pretty steady. I’ve been feeling like I’m on some terra-firma. I’m kind of wobbly, but I haven’t had a sense that I’m still on that crazy, crazy ride. Inside, things have begun to calm down and they’ve stayed pretty calm and steady for the last few days.

(the first post in this series is here: On Being A Social Outcast)
There is a link at the bottom of this post
that will take you to the next post in this series.

Here I go, morphing again. I feel like I’m riding the Matterhorn at Disneyland. The Matterhorn is a roller-coaster that you ride in complete darkness. You can’t see anything so you don’t know what’s coming next. This is how I’ve been feeling since the beginning of going through this crisis (my best friend telling me to shove off with no explanation) without running to any addiction of any kind; either substance or behavior.

My friend said good bye to me. We had been meeting every week; Tuesdays from three to five. Every week for three years. We studied Christian books together. “The Names of God”; “Lord Heal My Hurts”; “The Way of Agape”

Last week she told me she didn’t want to meet with me anymore. It was yesterday that we met for the last time. Now she’s gone.

My head knows why she did it. She had to. Her daughter had foisted three of her grand children on her to babysit everyday. She was homeschooling the twelve year old. The six year old had downs syndrome and ADHA, and the baby of eight months was a screamaholic. She’s sixty two and has battled cancer in her past. Last week the daughter moved to Southern California and out of her life. My relief and worry for her was finally over. So my head understands that she desperately needed a break. She said that first she was going to sleep for a month, then see the Grand Canyon, and then work on her book. It was completely understandable why she did it.

But not all of me is cooperating with the head.

I’m an addict, using every sort of earthly means I could lay my hands on to dissociate from pain. “Any port in a storm”, so they say. Alcohol was my drug of choice; then junk food, cigarettes, caffeine, crochet, TV, spending, wandering aimlessly around the house in an overwhelming fog.

But, one-by-one I’ve been barreling through each addiction with the single-mindedness of a cougar going after it’s prey. Since last August I have become determined to be addiction free. I want to run to the arms of the only One I can truly depend upon. The One who comes with no ill after-effects… God.

But now I am braving the first storm. And it’s a doozy. A hurricane, and I have no where to hide. No addiction to protect me from the raging fury passing directly overhead.

I lay on my bed, on my side, alone in the darkened room. Frozen still while this furious storm rages all around me. Monstrous claps of thunder pulse through my body.

In a thunder clap I am flung into a room. A voice screams at me…

Get in your room!!!

A lightening bolt of PTSD flash-back strikes and I am electrified. Then another, and another. They pierce me with direct hits. Then, in the light of a strike suddenly I become aware that I have been transported… to 1960.

In the instant flash of light I see something… no… someone. A small girl… huddled in the corner of her room. Her knees pressed tightly against her chest. Her arms wrapped around her knees. She’s in shock but… strangely… I can hear her thoughts.

What did I do?! Why is he so angry? I must be horrible for him to look at me with so much rage! I’m pure evil. I must be hideous for him to look at me with so much fire in his eyes.

She stares at nothing, almost not believing she came out alive through another savage assault.

Confused… baffled… bewildered… frozen. I see her in the lightening flashes. Petrified by what just happened, she does not move. And I can not move either. I am braving this storm. With each flash I get a glimpse. My eyes are fixated on her form and on her frozen face. I dare not budge. I do not want to miss a single second of this meeting. This memory.

A single tear runs over the bridge of my nose, then down my cheek to the pillow below. As I take her in my arms, this one tear is a miracle.

Together now, we survived the storm. We have both made it through alive.

Mine has been a tough life. I am not sure why it had to be that way, but it has been tough since the beginning. There are many things I deal with; Complex PTSD and DID from some extreme child abuse, schizo-affective disorder, alcoholism, suicide obsession, ulcerative colitis, constant anxiety, and a junk food obsession which is what I am working on with God right now.

Because my parents were pretty ‘out there’ as far as religion was concerned, I have a very spotty religious internal background. My parents took us to the Unitarian church until I and my sister were about eight years old and my brother was four. Then this most liberal of protestant churches kicked us out. As I have talked about earlier, my parents had a very warped view on the spiritual, or religious, aspects of living.

I’ve been reading a book on Theophostic Prayer Ministry. Very interesting. Has anyone else heard about this type of therapy? As I was reading it, I noticed that it resonated with my own story. I have experienced more than several spontaneous (prayer induced) healings in my life that resulted in permanent heart-changing views about… who I was… what life was about… what I could overcome… and many other things.

I'm Michelle. This is my blog. I write about women and fatness, expound upon semi-coherent thoughts I have in the middle of the night, and offer tough love to those in whom I am disappointed; they are legion.